I think I would have seen something if Paul had ever come right out and said that John claimed credit for Paul's songs, was suspicious, etc. They sometimes had slightly different recollections of how much each contributed to particular songs, but that's not the same as calling the other out.

That's not to say that Paul didn't THINK all those things, perhaps rightly in some small ways. He may have said those things in private, wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. Paul, however, is much too diplomatic to come right out and slag off Lennon in the media, with any cameras or tape recorders around. Trust me, it would be big news if he did. Instead, he says oblique things about John that can be interpreted various ways, such as (I'm paraphrasing here) "People think that John was the bully and I was nice, but that's not the way it was at all." They both used their song lyrics to (supposedly) take shots at each other, but that requires interpretation and they are, again, oblique shots at best.

Here are some thing that Paul DID say about John. You might notice Paul often uses little qualifiers when saying things about Lennon, such as "in the main" and "it wasn't always" like that, or putting his praise in the past tense:

"I feel that if I said anything about John, I would have to sit here for five days and say it all. Or I don't want to say anything."

"John's time and effort were, in the main, spent on pretty honorable stuff. As for the other side, well, nobody's perfect, nobody's Jesus. And look what they did to him."

"To keep the record straight, it wasn't always John and Yoko. We've all accused one another of various business things; we tend to be pretty paranoid by now, as you can imagine. There's a lot of money involved."

"I definitely did look up to John. We all looked up to John. He was older and he was very much the leader; he was the quickest wit and the smartest."

The best stories, though, are the ones where you have to look at what Paul does rather than what he says. For instance, there's a story (perhaps made up) that he saw a songbook that, for space reasons, supposedly credited "Yesterday" solely to Lennon. That started the whole "Lennon/McCartney" vs. "McCartney/Lennon" fiasco of about ten years ago.

Also delicious are the (probably completely made up) stories that suggest a deep dislike between Paul and the others, such as the one that Yoko supposedly set Paul up for the Tokyo drug bust (while, um, John was still very much alive).

But if anyone can point me to a direct quote wherein Paul flat-out calls John a weasel, I will be astonished, because I have never seen one in the media directly attributed to him.

nimrod

macca would have said this sentence in privatein May 1981 (right after he'd attended Ringo's wedding to Barbara Bach on April 27)

macca was tired of all the titles proclaiming lennon as the best beatles ever !

i think you can read that in one of the biographies written by Hunter Davies.

I think we all know that they took big swipes at each other and criticised each other, its no big deal, even siblings have that love/hate thing going, yes they sometimes got on each others tits and said nasty things.................so what ?

Since John died Paul has said great things about John (even wrote a song about him) John said great things about Paul before he died (he even said he loved him) you dont say these things unless you mean them, I see the b****ing as a sibling type thing, Ive called my brother a dickhead more than once

In his final Playboy Interview, John said that song was more about himself than about Paul.

oh gawwdwd! Well John Lennon might have written some of the most wonderful songs I've ever heard in my life, ha ha ha no pun intended, but I'm calling him on that BS! He was more than a little prone to psychobabble and that just epitomes what complete and utter guff could come out of his mouth. He was angry at Paul and he wrote a song slagging him off. That's all there was to it. Plain and simple. I don't even think it's that big a deal esp. as they later started getting on better and as Nimrod said John said he loved Paul later on. He even wore a badge saying so. It's only an issue for journalists and partially interested observers to gossip about. I remember getting angry at that Bob Harris interview where he asked John if he 'regreted How do you sleep?'. Why the heck should it even be a question but it was. That's journalism for you...that's the human race for you.

You have a good grasp on the mainstream view, that the song was purely an attack on Paul.

However, when an artist creates something, then tells me "this is what I really meant," I do him the courtesy of trying to see how that might have played out.

If you look at some of the lyrics of the song without reference to the fact that they are titles of Paul's songs - admittedly, difficult to do, but try it - you really can interpret much of that song as an act of self-loathing.

"Sgt. Pepper took you by surprise" - Paul thought up Sgt. Pepper - how could it take HIM by surprise. It probably took Lennon by surprise, all right. That's when Lennon lost control of the band for good, the pivotal moment in Beatles history.

"The only thing you done was yesterday" - Lennon's post-Beatles career was nowhere near the level of success of Paul's. Paul was riding high, Lennon was drifting.

"and since you've gone you're just another day" - Paul led a successful band, while Lennon was just another solo artist.

Now, I admit that a few of the lines do seem like direct shots at Paul - the "pretty face" line, the "muzak to my ears" shot, the "you was dead" reference. I would argue that, if you take away the fact that they appear aimed at Paul, and instead see them as being aimed at a Beatle, you can also see them as an indirect attack on himself - former leader of the Beatles, the man who more than anyone created them and identified with them. One can just see John, angry at himself for putting out increasingly unappreciated songs, belittling them as "muzak," and thinking of himself as being just as dead inside creatively as the "freaks" said Paul was in reality. The idea of the Beatles as just being "pretty faces" whose time had passed may have preyed on his mind. I am reminded of a curious statement Linda said much later, that when John "retired," it wasn't because he didn't want to write - it was because he couldn't.

That's why I said it was oblique. Paul is never mentioned by name, and Lennon leaves it up to the listener to draw the appropriate conclusions. Ultimately, the listeners were completely fooled, the joke was on them (and Lennon was famous for doing stuff like that), since he by his own admission was talking as much about himself as his former bandmate in this song. Using the titles to Paul's songs was the perfect cover, camouflage for his real target to the tenth degree. Nobody understood that he was sad, depressed, angry at himself, and bitter about his own failings, both in failing to keep the Beatles together (which he could have done, quite easily, by getting rid of Allen Klein), and in going down a path that increasingly must have looked like it led nowhere.

It was so brilliant, so deceptive, that to this day, and despite his own explanation, listeners don't catch on to what he was doing.

nimrod

yes Im sue he would be lying, probably because he regretted it, Im sure Paul regretted his question and answer interview sheet he put in the McCartney album, they were definitely into taking swipes at each other during that period..